[4] Patron saint of rain.
CHAPTER XIX
The next afternoon the Cardinal was dictating letters to his chaplain, who also acted as his secretary. A bad cold and the increasing rain were keeping him a prisoner. So he sat in the little crimson-walled study, leaning back in his chair and delivering his sentences in beautiful epistolary Italian, less like every-day colloquial than Horace is like Church Latin. The young priest bent over the table, writing for dear life, torn between his desire to keep up with the silver fluency of the speaker and his ambition to make the large page look like a lithographed example of perfect penmanship.
The entrance of Domenico promised him a breathing space, but it was a vain hope. The Cardinal took no notice of the velvet-footed old man, and continued his dictation. Only when the chaplain rose and brought him the letter for inspection and signature did the master look up at his servant, with a lifting of the eyebrows which said, "What is it? You may speak."
"Eminenza, it concerns the subterraneans," Domenico replied. "The foreman says he will have to quit work, as a good deal of water is coming up through the drain."
"Well then, they must quit," the Cardinal replied, adding, with mild expostulation, "It was not necessary to come and inform me of that while I was seriously occupied, my son."
"I would not have ventured to come in for that alone, Eminenza," said the man, smiling mysteriously, "but there is something else. In digging to find out whether there was a leak in the chief conduit, they struck upon a little mound, bricked in, and when they opened it they found—"
"The rest of the inscription?" exclaimed the Cardinal, his eyes shining with anticipation.